Hi, Tigginz.
Comments inline...
Tigginz said:
I've responded to each of your questions below in your text. Thanks ahead
of
time for the help!
On a side note, I have a 2GB USB acting as a Boostdrive (or whatever the
term is). However, I haven't put any new USB connections in before the
whole
thing came to a screeching halt.
A ReadyBoost drive does claim a "drive" letter, so adding one to an existing
setup MIGHT change the letters by which Vista refers to existing drives. I
always use Disk Management to (semi-)permanently assign letters so that if I
unplug a USB drive (for example) and then plug it in again later, DM will
assign it the same letter if possible. My ReadyBoost drive is R:, the
SanDisk SD card reader is S:, the DVD writer is W:, etc. Also, I assign
names (labels) to each volume when I can; these get written to the drive and
don't change, even if D:\Data becomes F:\Data at some point.
1.) Make and model of your computer: A Dell XPS Gen 5 dual core
I'm not familiar with Dell model numbers, but I'm sure others here will
recognize it.
2.) How many hard drives: 2 hard drives running a performance RAID
configuration
I assume that "performance RAID" means RAID 0, which stripes data onto two
or more drives for speed of access. As opposed to RAID 1, which writes all
the data to 2 drives, like a mirror, for data safety through redundancy.
3.) (IDE, SATA, etc.): This one I'm not sure of, probably SATA
Please be sure, because this probably goes to the heart of the particular
problem you are having. Because of legacy factors, most motherboards always
see IDE drives first, before looking for SCSI or SATA or other interfaces.
Even now, most CD/DVD drives are IDE, even if the hard drives are SATA.
Many users have unplugged their old HDs, then plugged in their new SATA
drive and installed Vista on it, then plugged in their old drives again.
When the computer reboots, it looks first for IDE drives and sees the old
ones - and never sees the nice new Vista installation on the SATA drive. It
sounds like your problem is something like this, even if not exactly like
it.
So it is important to know your complete drive configuration: How many HDs?
What interfaces? How are they partitioned and formatted? How about optical
drives, USB drives and any other devices that are assigned "drive" letters?
4.) Vista version? 32 bit Ultimate, upgraded from Business. This whole
system was upgraded from XP.
OK. It probably would help if we know the exact upgrade path, from WinXP to
Vista Business and from Vista Business to Vista Ultimate.
Upgraded from XP to Vista Business originally, then to Ultimate. I know,
messy.
Not messy if done properly, but easy to make a wrong sidestep.
What I really meant was whether you are - or ever were - dual-booting
multiple operating systems at the same time. Your mention of the boot
manager triggered that question. Most users never even know that file
exists. It is used to select between WinXP and Vista, for example, if both
are installed on the same computer. Or between Vista Business and Vista
Ultimate, if both are installed at one time.
I've been dual-booting for years and it works very well when installed
properly. But it is the topic of many threads here because it's very easy
to do it wrong, and not always easy to recover. It is so easy to create a
dual-boot system that some users have done it unintentionally. So I wanted
to know if your system has ever been set up for dual-booting.
This comment was related to our topic 3, above. This kind of problem is not
new; it has cropped up often, even when all the drives were IDE. Windows
(any version) would complain that ntoskrnl.exe was corrupted or missing.
Usually we found that the file was fine and in the right place - but the
startup process was looking for it in the wrong place. All we had to do was
correct the pointers in the startup files and things were fine. A common
cause for the confusion was that one or more drives or partitions had been
added or removed since Windows was installed.
On boot, I get
the message that windows failed to load because the system registry file
is
missing or corrupt (status: 0xc000014c).
On re-reading your first post, I see that the complaint is not what I first
thought. Could you please post the entire error message, not just that one
code. All my comments are valid, but I may have headed down a wrong alley.
Did you get:
STOP 0x00000074 (0x00000003, 0x00000002, 0x80087000, 0xc000014c)
Or some other Stop code?
OK. I'll wait for your response to see if you need more guidance - or if we
need still more info.
RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail 2008 in Vista Ultimate x64 SP1)